PT34.S3.Q06 - standard archaeological techniques

Giant Panda

Hi guys,

Question is here: https://7sage.com/lesson/prehistoric-paintings-weaken-question/

So just to dive deeper and solidify foundation, I tried to translate this question into a logic framework and I wrote it below. Please see if it is done correctly

~Carbon-->Age (if there is no carbon, then we can determine its age)
~Limestone with paint-->~sample (If we there is no limestone with paint, then there is no sample)
~Sample-->~Age (if there is no sample, then we cannot determine its age)

And combine everything together we have: ~Limestone--->~Sample--->~Age-->Carbon

Did I translate it correctly? It feels weird.

Thanks,

Panda

Giant Panda

Sorry, beginner here. Some instruction or corrections will be more than helpful. Much thanks~

Positive

It's more like,

P1: Standard techniques determine the age --> the object is without carbon.
P2. Collect samples from prehistoric paintings --> there must be carbon.
C: The techniques we talked about cannot determine the age of prehistoric paintings.

In a simpler form,
P1: STDA --> /C
P2: Sample --> C
C: /STDA

Sometimes, especially for the second premise here, it is better (I should say faster) to believe in your understanding of the sentence instead of strictly using if/then indicators.

BinghamtonDave

When I took a look at this one this morning I didn't find mapping it out all that helpful. Having in your possession mapping skills is a great skill to possess but as an aside, there is something of a consensus that in the beginning stages of prep, it is often over used (I certainly overused it.) Now, for this question there are indeed conditional logic indicators: "only if" "without." But the question I always ask myself is: to what end does mapping help me with this question? The chain you have above, what exactly does it do for us on this specific question? I agree that knowing how to do it is useful in other instances, but for this question, the AC is actually just a challenge to the forcefulness of one of the premises.

In my estimation, the more important thing to do on this question is to notice and take note of the slide in language from the premise to the conclusion. The problem is telling us that if we attempt to take paint to date it we will also be taking limestone with it. The conclusion is then a wide ranging statement that it is "impossible" to determine the age. What this seems to be indicating is that limestone is the major hurdle to dating the paint, our job here is to find a way out of this conundrum. (B) gives that to us. It proposes a way in which we can separate the limestone from the sample to do the dating task.